Tag Archives: 9/11

Photos and messages of “Don’t Forget” bombard my Twitter, Faceboook and social media accounts today. I won’t. One day the future generations will. It’s the nature of History. I’ve been vocal about not making 9/11 a National Holiday. I fear it will morph into the unofficial last weekend of the Summer. An event my friends didn’t die for so the future generations will get zero percent interest on a new car.

In times of sadness I always seek the Ocean. It’s my go to place. I see others here this morning.We’re isolationists in our mourning perhaps still scarred by the Original day of frantic phone calls, closed bridges, tunnels and fear. Cell phones going unanswered, emails never returned betrayed by Technology that day we were lost.

We aren’t supposed to go to funerals every day for such a long period of time. Too many funerals, too many photos placed inside the hats of the FDNY and First Responders, too many mothers with newly born children or those cocooned in a womb yet to catch their first breath of life. My nephew was to be born that day. Perhaps the sense of maternal protection kept him safely within as my sister was too far away over a bridge alone in her own fear and we were helpless.

A few years ago a fireman dressed in his official uniform held a brown bag containing a beer saluting his fallen brothers in the mist of a rainy day. He stood tall on the Boardwalk alone and wet. I wrote a Facebook note about going home and bringing him back a warm dry towel but when I returned he was gone.

This morning the beach is scattered with some souls that look out to the Atlantic with me. We acknowledge each other with a simple smile as we can’t forget nor do we wish to divulge our inner most thoughts.

Today’s blue sky the same as That Day. The Silence still haunts me when the planes stopped landing in Kennedy and then pierced by fighter jets later as our World officially changed forever. The Atlantic offers the reflection we need. I think we’re waiting for it to answer the question we repeat over and over, “Why?” The Ocean doesn’t answer. The answers will never come. I will never forget.